Carlyle Group in talks to invest $45M in DailyHunt

Separately, Japan’s SoftBank, which operates the world’s largest pool of private capital, has also had discussions with DailyHunt, to invest $120-150 million.Biswarup Gooptu&Reghu Balakrishnan | ET Tech | July 09, 2019, 07:47 IST

Bulge-bracket private equity firm Carlyle Group is in advanced discussions to invest an estimated $45 million (about Rs 308 crore) in news and content application DailyHunt, as the Bengaluru-based company looks to delve deeper into the vernacular content space, while continuing to stave off competition from its deep-pocketed Chinese rivals.

If successful, the transaction could value the 12-year-old company at about $650 million, premoney, according to multiple sources aware of the development. Separately, Japan’s SoftBank, which operates the world’s largest pool of private capital, has also had discussions with DailyHunt, to potentially invest $120-150 million in the company.

When contacted by ET, DailyHunt spokespersons said the firm didn’t comment on “speculative” stories, while Carlyle Group spokespersons declined to comment.

A SoftBank spokesperson also said that the Japanese investor “did not comment on speculation”.

The development comes at a time when Daily-Hunt, which has emerged as one of the largest Indic news and content apps in the country, is looking to further venture into the vernacular segment that makes up the majority of consumers using the services.

The company also competes with Times Internet, the digital arm of Bennett, Coleman & Co, the publisher of The Economic Times.

Umang Bedi, president of DailyHunt, last year claimed that the app had 100 million monthly active users.

The company competes with a host of other startups operating in the space, including, In-Shorts, which counts New York-based investment firm Tiger Global Management as a backer. Bengaluru-based DailyHunt has been on a fund-raising spree over the course of the last 12 months.

In 2019, it raised ₹74 crore from Falcon Edge Capital, post which, an investment unit of Goldman Sachs put in almost ₹250 crore, according to data sourced from business signals platform paper.vc.

In May, DailyHunt, which also counts venture capital firms Matrix Partners and Sequoia Capital, and Omidyar Network among its list of backers, had scooped up over ₹155 crore from Brussels-based investment firm Sofina, at a price per share of ₹12,260 for a mix of preference and equity shares.

“The news aggregation space continues to hold promise. But in order to break up, these platforms need to be able to make the leap from being people shops into AI plus curation-driven operations,” Vivek Durai, cofounder of paper.vc, said.

The capital raised by DailyHunt also comes at a time when the company has begun to face stiff competition from the likes of ByteDance, the Chinese content provider, and one of the world’s most richly-valued ventures.

Incidentally, ByteDance is also an investor in DailyHunt, having led a $25-million funding round in the latter in 2016. Bytedance has not participated in subsequent funding rounds of DailyHunt.

ByteDance, which has launched three flagship products in India — Vigo Video, Helo and Tik-Tok — has around 300 million monthly active users in India across its suite of three products. Statista, a German database firm, says TikTok alone has 200 million users, of which 120 million are active on a monthly basis, compared to 300 million Facebook users in India.